The government’s economic playbook continues to generate headlines: local assembly of Chromebooks with Google, reopened canola trade with Canada, and an impending fresh tranche of International Monetary Fund, amid claims of steady improvement in Pakistan’s debt sustainability.
These developments are welcome (and in many respects necessary) for a country emerging from chronic crisis. However, as anyone following our economy closely will tell you, such milestones are only the start of the climb, not the summit.
Take the Chromebook factory, for instance, which is being touted by Deputy PM Ishaq Dar as an “industrial milestone”. Indeed, for a country that has long been content with imports, the assembly of digital hardware marks unseen progress.
Yet assembly is not innovation, and even more pertinently, imported components do not equate to local value creation. Without reliable power, venture capital and dense export chains, this and any similar initiative risks being a symbolic victory rather than a structural one.
Likewise, the reboot of canola imports from Canada may ease consumer pressure in edible-oil markets, but it also underscores how often our trade stories are reactive. We need to understand how Pakistan is unbanning the very source it had earlier banned and still wishes to celebrate the turnaround rather than designing a durable agricultural-trade blueprint.
On the macro front, the books look (at least, on paper) more stable. Earlier in July, a current-account surplus was reported at over US $2 billion for FY25, the first in 14 years. Still, even as the IMF approves further support, it would considerably add to the national debt, which already remains above 70 per cent of GDP, and nearly half of revenue goes to interest payments.
Meanwhile, the ordinary Pakistani still navigates rising food and energy bills. The economy may be stabilising, but for many lives it hasn’t started turning around.
Our challenge now is turning stability into scale and symbolism into substance. Will the authorities convert these headlines into enduring productivity, meaningful jobs and a tech-driven export base? Or will today’s progress simply paper over yesterday’s faults? Pakistan needs not just milestones but a blueprint, may they be tax reforms, human-capital investment, industrial strategy or a combination of all, to ensure gains trickle down.
The government may be further up the hill than a year ago. But for the climb ahead to matter, the path must widen to include the millions still standing at the base. *